Floating Lantern Peace Ceremony

Come and join us in this free, family event where approximately 2,000 colourful, glowing paper lanterns will be launched on the reflecting pond at Olympic Plaza on Saturday, August 3, 2019, during Calgary’s seventh annual Floating Lantern Peace Ceremony. Organized by the Calgary Ploughshares Society, this free, family event for everyone looks with hope towards a peaceful, nuclear-weapons-free world that is free from violence, and commemorates the lives lost in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The ceremony represents our hope that no other cities or people worldwide will ever again experience the violence and destruction of nuclear weapons.
The program will feature a speaker about peace, Syrian TED-TALK poet Ghada Alatrash, the Calgary Women’s Chorus, a Japanese adult/children’s choir, award-winning television anchor/journalist Nirmala Naidoo as MC, and greetings of peace from mayors around the world. Lanterns will be available to rent for a donation of $5 or more each (to cover material costs of the lantern) and attendees are invited to write and decorate lanterns with their own messages of peace and float them on the pool in solidarity with the millions who are offering similar messages of peace in cities worldwide. We would like as many children as possible to enjoy this lantern event, which sends a message about the importance of creating a culture of peace and dignity for all. The sight of 2,000 glowing lanterns floating peacefully around the Olympic reflecting pool is a breathtaking sight.
Floating lantern ceremonies are held every year in Japan and around the world to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombings and to take a stand for lasting world peace. Calgary’s ceremony is held in conjunction with groups who are holding events in many of the 7,744 cities in 163 regions/countries worldwide who have joined Mayors for Peace, a group of mayors including Mayor Nenshi and Mayor Bronconnier before him, who are calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.